Symposium

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Police Brutality Claims Shadow Tunisia Elections

Tunisian women demonstrate outside a courthouse where three police officers face charges of rape of a 27-year-old woman, in Tunis, Tunisia.

TUNIS, TUNISIA (AP) — When Mohammed Ali Snoussi was arrested last month in Tunis, witnesses say, police beat him with truncheons, stripped him naked and threatened to rape him in broad daylight.

The Interior Ministry said Snoussi was wanted for drug possession, trafficking and assaulting police. He lasted six days in police detention cells, before he was transferred to a hospital where he died in a coma, his body covered in bruises.

Nearly four years after an uprising fueled largely by anger over police brutality overthrew one of the most repressive states in the region, ordinary Tunisians say daily abuses by security forces remain a major problem in the country. On Sunday, Tunisians are set to vote in parliamentary elections that will nearly complete the democratic transition begun by the revolution, but many fear the brutal ways of the former regime are creeping back — and in fact may never have gone away.

According to Human Rights Watch, police regularly abuse detainees in prison and pre-trial detention facilities, denying them access to legal counsel and holding them in filthy, overcrowded cells. In a survey of 100 detainees awaiting charges, the organization found that 30 percent said they had been subject to physical abuse including electric shocks, in order to extract confessions or evidence.

"I think we can say with confidence that practices of police abuse never stopped," said Amna Guellali, Human Rights Watch's Tunisian representative. Those bearing the brunt of the police violence are ordinary, lower income Tunisians living in poor neighborhoods regularly targeted under harsh drug possession laws, which mandate at least a year in prison for carrying drugs, said the rights group.

Much like pre-revolution times, they face nighttime house raids and constant neighborhood sweeps, followed by abuse in the police stations, with little recourse to justice, activists say. Tunisia's police have long treated the poor harshly, and the Arab Spring upheavals were in fact set off when an itinerant fruit vendor set himself on fire in protest against police abuse.

Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou admitted there are abuses in prison, but strongly denied systematic torture of detainees. In a radio interview this month, he said Snoussi died of drug use which caused a lung infection that spread to his heart. He said a prosecutor and an investigator found no traces of police beating him.

"The autopsy is clear. It is not logical that after the revolution we would hide the truth," he said. "You can't assign security forces responsibility for a natural death, as was the case." In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, most security forces withdrew from the streets of Tunisia in the face of the widespread outrage against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's police state. But the rise of extremist groups during the ensuing social instability has led to their rehabilitation.

In the past few years, Islamic radicals went from publicly demonstrating for greater piety to attacking people. Two left-wing politicians were gunned down in 2013 and dozens of soldiers were killed in attacks in remote border regions, causing people to clamor for greater security.

According to critics, however, terrorism is being used as an excuse to let the police literally get away with murder — with ordinary people rather than extremists or government opponents the most common targets.

In August, security services in the southern city of Kasserine opened fire on a car travelling home from a wedding, killing two young women. Violent protests broke out in the city, demanding prosecution of the officers involved.

But Kasserine is near Mount Chaambi on the Algerian border, which is believed to be the hideout for a group of al-Qaida-linked militants. The Interior Ministry maintained the officers were only defending themselves, and no one was prosecuted.

During the time of Ben Ali, the Interior Ministry was notorious for using the threat of sexual violence to intimidate female activists and for launching smear campaigns against government opponents. Sabra Badbabis, a 25 year-old human rights activist and blogger in Tunis, said the behavior continues. She described how she recently left work at a call center around midnight to find herself accosted by two men who turned out to be plainclothes policemen.

"They grabbed me and pulled my arms back and pushed my head down," she said. "Don't say you're a respectable woman," she recalled them telling her. "You went out at this time of night. Whatever happens to you is your fault."

She said she was taken the police station, where she was insulted and propositioned. She said she was only released after she threatened to make the incident public on her blog. The Association Against Torture in Tunisia wants to persuade the new crop of lawmakers who emerge from the election to take measures against police violations. The group's general secretary, Mondher Cherni, said the goal is to pressure the newly elected politicians to carry out real reform of security services and detention centers.

Cherni says police brutality is alienating whole sections of Tunisian society from the nation's democratic transition. "The people feel that the state doesn't look after them," he said, "because it's not stopping this."

FROM THE ARCHIVES: THE AMBROSE EHIRIM-CHIKA UNIGWE INTERVIEW

Every writer has to be able to live in the head of her characters. I had to make myself a blank blackboard for the characters to inscribe their lives on me. I had to wipe off that board every time a new character had to be created and totally surrender myself to that new character.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: INTERVIEW: THE SYLVESTER MENSAH STORY

The idea of writing a book had always engaged my thoughts based on reflections and the desire to share my experiences. The motivation was however triggered after reading the book of a gentleman l consider the busiest in Ghana, H. E. John Dramani Mahama

FROM THE ARCHIVES: INTERVIEW: DR. APOLLOS NWAUWA

Contrary to what many think, the Igbo Diaspora is not really a homogenous, coherent group. Like other ethnic nationalities in the USA, the Igbo Diaspora consists of peoples from all walks of life separated by everything and only united by the fact that they are all Igbo. Serious social class disparity exists between them; therefore, presenting a united front in influencing or engineering actions at home continues to be a challenge.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: INTERVIEW: OZO'S KENI SAINT GEORGE

It was indeed a very boisterous, purpose driven, well-to-do Royal family. I come from a lineage of Royals and a well groomed family unit. My Father, Chief George Ozuloke, was a Court Judge for all of 18 years. He was both a Christian and Animist. He had 7 wives of which my mother was the first. I went to St. Martins Primary School and later to a wonderful School – Abbot Secondary Grammar School in Ihiala, my town. I even did a stint in Ihiala Seminary trying to be a Catholic Priest

FROM THE ARCHIVES: INTERVIEW: JULIUS KPADUWA

The problems that confront Imo State are really not unique. It is the same problem that confronts almost every state in Nigeria, and it's one of economic development. The primary thing or my clear vision for the people of Imo State will be getting all the able-bodied men and women back to work, so that we can begin to have the quality of life that has so far eluded the people of Imo State.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: THE OTOKOTO SAGA INTERVIEW

Earlier this year, in January, it was reported in the country’s dailies that your father and six others had been condemned to death. Those condemned with your father were: Alban Ajaegbu, Sampson Nnamito, Ebenezer Egwuekwe, Rufus Anyanwu, Lawrence Eboh, and Chief Leonard Unogu. How is your dad related to the names I have mentioned?

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Where We Met

But seeing a Nigeria headline on my screen it then occurred to him I must either be a Nigerian or perhaps a curious minded fellow who is reading to find out about the notorious Boko Haram, if they have captured more of their victims, or if there's an ongoing battle between the insurgents and the nation's security forces. Elevating my head up and starring at each other, I told him I was Igbo

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About Me

Ambrose Ehirim is a blogger, a writer, a photo-journalist, a volunteer and teacher. He has published articles and essays in African Times, African Watch, Pace News, Los Angeles Weekly, Life & Time Magazine, Kilima, American Chronicle, Long Beach Sentinel, Reuters and many other publications. He was former editor of New Life and West Coast Bureau Chief at the BNW Magazine. An Anti-Igbo Pogrom scholar and researcher, and currently working on and researching the 'Eastside Groups and Bands' Vintage Years.'

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